Facts about Mexicans

In 2012, 5.9 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico lived in the U.S., down about 1 million from 2007. Despite the drop, Mexicans still make up a slight majority (52% in 2012) of unauthorized immigrants. At the same time, unauthorized immigration overall has leveled off in recent years. As a result, net migration from Mexico likely reached zero in 2010, and since then more Mexicans have left the U.S. than have arrived.

I wasn’t asking in relation to illegal immigrants. If you, as a state, sanction the arrival of a person for work or whatever and he comes from a tribal society with extended families as the norm, then you are opening yourself to large influxes of people that you never signed off on.

Your belief is correct. The only thing the current administration has done is indicate it does not plan to deport certain individuals. It has been blocked from changing any resident status, at least until there are some further court hearings.
There have been zero ‘amnesties’ moving anyone to either a documented resident or green card. And of course, zero citizenships conferred.

NAFTA, Yes. Improving opportunities in Mexico. Slightly worse opportunities in the US.
Don’t think the border is really much less permeable. They just walk through the Arizona desert in groups. It’s not like they’re actually going to use normal border crossings.

Birth rate dropped dramatically in Mexico during the 80’s and 90’s. A few years back a researcher from the AEI was saying to not to worry to much about migration from Mexico, it was going to fix itself by the 2020’s.

When people wonder why the Republican candidate won 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004 but the equally pro-immigration Republican candidate in 2008 won only 31%, they overlook the effect of the Housing Bubble / Bust:

Immigration from Mexico and the Housing Bubble were interrelated in multiple ways. Not surprisingly, lots of Mexicans and their Mexican-American relatives wound up defaulting on houses they couldn’t afford:

“When people wonder why the Republican candidate won 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004 but the equally pro-immigration Republican candidate in 2008 won only 31%, they overlook the effect of the Housing Bubble / Bust:”

McCain and Bush were both “pro-immigration,” but it’s not a binary category. Bush put far, far more effort into wooing Hispanic voters than McCain.

McCain and Ted Kennedy co-sponsored the amnesty act that failed in the Senate in 2006:

“Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (“McCain-Kennedy Bill,” S. 1033) was an immigration reform bill introduced in the United States Senate on May 12, 2005 by Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy. It was the first of its kind since the early 2000s in incorporating legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components.”

That’s because his constant support for amnesty nearly killed his campaign before it started, and it was only due to the grace of a generous God (to McCain, if not the rest of us) that he was the last one left standing. Had he not utterly abandoned immigration as a cause, he’d have been shot down and someone else would have been resurrected.

McCain showed how little he cared about being President when, in 2010, he made all the campaign promises to keep his Senate seat that he refused to make while running for President.

Yeah, Steve’s wrong on this one. A fairly small 9% drop in Hispanic support from Bush to McCain is easily explained by their different levels of courting of the bloc. In addition, Bush simply did better among all voters. How much of the 9% is because of that? Bush was a winner, McCain not.

The odds that a Hispanic voter would support Bush would have been 4/6 or 0.66. The odds of doing so for McCain were .31/.69 or 0.45. That’s a drop of nearly 1/3, which is not ‘fairly small’. The drop in the odds of supporting the Republican candidate amongst the whole population was 17%. with the odds declining from 1.05 to 0.87.

As I note below, the people we now call “Mexicans” have been here for thousands of years. And yes, I think they have shaped our culture, and made us all more Hispanic in our nature than say New Englanders.

As I note below, the people we now call “Mexicans” have been here for thousands of years.

No, because there were no Mexicans thousands of years ago. There were Amerindian tribes, and not necessarily the same ones our ancestors encountered in the early modern period. Actual settlement of Mexican criollos, mestizos, and mission Indians in what is now the southwestern United States was, ca. 1840, enumerated in five digits.

Isn’t that because it has a lot smaller population than most of the top 10 (except for NV) and they’re looking at number (% of total), not % of state population? (And NV has a lot of opportunity in Las Vegas?)

The key is net tax consumption, not the mere fact of employment. Also, illegal labor lowers wages for people on the margins. That’s going to translate into more homeless men, and more people “retiring” to disability.

Your first point is debatable, but even so, it’s not at all obvious to me right now that illegals are net tax consumers. Can they collect Social Security on their wage history?

Your second two sentences are true, good solid economics. But how many?

Besides, look at the concentration of employment in some businesses. Do you know any of these businesspeople? I do. Time and again, I hear how much trouble they have finding reliable local labor. These are not plutocrats.

To use a comparatively extreme example, it’s hard to find reliable roofers because it’s back-breaking, difficult work that is never going to pay well. Employers should be figuring out how to automate roofing instead of importing ever-more desperate coolies and dumping them on public and private welfare rolls. This brings up an under-remarked point: a lot of those workers will be disabled by age 55, if not 45.

That illegals are “net tax consumers” is a claim in vogue, but it seems more used as a shield against data, than a data-driven conclusion. Of course, it gets worse. “Ever-more desperate coolies” is one of those phrases which goes beyond “self-refuting” to “flag me as a nutter.”

Illegals are also a tremendous strain on the health care system. They show up at ERs en masse for runny noses, and then you get a bill for $1500 for the doctor who spent all morning on nonpayers and 8 minutes with you.

Urso: actually there seems to be 2 strains of nativism. There’s the ‘they’re taking our jobs’ strain, for sure. And then there’s the ‘I don’t care if they like to work, they are gonna ruin our great white nation with their music and food and telenovelas…and then their kids won’t take our jobs’ strain. And many espouse both.

Natives playing vidya games are using up the capital and institutions their ancestors built instead of accepting less than first world working conditions and compensation. How long this will last will remain to be seen, but that capital savings is burning fast and the value of “America” itself will go down as conditions regress. They may be out of such luxury sooner than expected.

It’s pretty obvious in the difference in Mexican food between the West and Eastern US (even decent Mexican food is very rare on the east coast) though there is a large amount of central american food of varying quality.

Dunno about that. In the cities, maybe, but I had tons of very good, very cheap, very “authentic” Mexican food at restaurants catering to Mexican farm workers in Pennsylvania horse country. They constitute 50% of the population in some towns (such as Kennett Square, where I lived.) The grub was better than much of the Tex-Mex fare here in H-town.

The “Mexican” food in Jersey sucks, because most of the Hispanic labor there is Guatemalan, which the Mexicans view as an uncultured backwater.

I am just pointing out the obvious: no matter how much桦; you may like to fret about swarthy people “illegaly” crossing the border, there is much much more than one foreigner for every American . The invasion was, you were annexed. Your politicians can call it “legal immigration, there is a much better name for that: surrender. Answering your question, no, there is no war, America didn’t/won’t fight, she surrendered. Americans exchanged their birthright for a mess pottage, Chinese trinkets and Mexican cheap labor. The American Dream has gone sour.

I question the accuracy of your view of America. Some people complain on the Internet. Millions upon million of other people continue to make the American Dream happen every day. Some of these people are immigrants. More of these people were born here.

“Some people complain on the Internet. Millions upon million of other people continue to make the American Dream happen every day.”
Lots of Spaniards made their dreams happen in what was Aztec/Inca/Mayan land. Millions of Japanese made their dreams happen in what once was Ainu land. Lots of Barbarians made their dreams happen in what once was proud Roman land. Good for them, I say. How goes again the story of the hunter who tried to coexist with the bear? The bear got a full stomach, the hunter got a nice fur coat. It is a nice deal if you can get it–and if you are a bear. And the bear’s children can vote.

We should probably at least touch the truth that “Mexicans” are just un-killed “native Americans,” and any European who is talking about their “invasion” is thinking of a very particular moment in world history. I think PJ O’rourke once said “Indians have every right to North America .. but oops, we killed them all.”

Thiago, you might have missed my meaning. I grew up in one of those towns with a half-Spanish name. My Danish father learned Spanish and taught school in East Los Angeles. I count it all as a pretty great success, and scoff at weird racist latecomers who think that California was always white, or something.

(I guess we learned surfing from the English, a traditional surfing culture.)

It amazes me that people think American culture is so weak that it will collapse due to immigration , and meanwhile that very same culture continues to make inroads throughout the world, no small thanks to Hollywood and Levi’s jeans et al.

“Focus on culture (the freedom stuff), not skin colour.”
For culture falls from the sky, it has no relation whatsoever with… people. Foreign people don’t come with…foreign culture. Well, congratulations, you are free to be eaten, he we re back where we (Mankind) started.
“I count it all as a pretty great success.”
As the guy who leapt from the 30 th floor said when he was going through the 20 th one, “Until now, everything is fine” (he liked free fall I lot more than I do, I guess).

If a poor family with two children immigrates to California from a foreign country and the parents earn a living in the relatively low paying jobs (e.g. house cleaning, construction, landscaping, restaurant kitchen work, etc) how does the arithmetic work out?

Where is this money coming from?

Do the two parents really pay enough in taxes to offset what state and local school districts pay to educate those two children? Some claim that they do, over their working lifetimes.

I’d like to see how the numbers add up. We need to allow for the fact that some of this income goes unreported and un-taxed. And there isn’t all that much income to start with.

But hey, maybe it all works out.

(And maybe, in this “Average is Over” world, California students are so well educated they actually dominate and lead the global economy. I don’t know why the big Silicon Valley tech companies insist that they need to hire more workers who were educated in foreign countries, but that’s another discussion, I guess).

The vast majority of Mexicans are mestizo. Not sure how you come up with the proposition that they are just as (or more) entitled to live in America as you are. Just because they have some American Indian blood in them, as if American Indians were a monolithic group all entitled to live on the land of any tribe? That’s like saying I have the moral right to live anywhere in Europe because I’m white.

First I’ll note that like many Californians, Steve Sailor and I live on old Spanish land-grant ranches. Guess what? They’ve had “Mexicans” on them for a thousand years. No one emptied California in the mission days, and made sure ranch hands, caballeros, were all brought up from the south. Mission Indians became the first “Mexicans” here. It is actually sad that they are called “Mexicans” to this day.

Second, if anyone here is not a Gabrieleños or Juaneños, they kind of have to admit that they are immigrants themselves, and that ending up here was fairly random. I think acknowledging that randomness, and that you joined a multicultural California history, should make you open to all its components.

Okay, so to be clear you are talking about people who are NOT Mexican nationals and are irrelevant to the post. I do not live in California. Everyone in the world except for maybe a few Africans is in some ancestral sense an immigrant, but I frankly do not understand the relevance of that either. Just because your ancestors immigrated somewhere in the past we should now allow anyone in the world to flaunt our laws and just walk into the country and live here as long as they want?

I am not an immigrant. Certainly some of my ancestors were immigrants. I’m sure many of my ancestors were murderers as well. Does that give me sympathy for murderers? I have no idea if any of my ancestors immigrated illegally. Does it really matter?

The “we’re all immigrants” line is complete garbage as are all arguments trying to link actions of groups of people centuries ago to some sort of collective guilt for their descendants today. You could take this reasoning back so far that everyone is implicated in so much shameful activity that the conclusion would be that should all kill ourselves for the good of the universe. If we’re all X, then trying to sort, differentiate and judge by “X” is a complete waste of time and a dumb appeal to emotion. It is an obfuscation technique that enables one to disregard important, but perhaps uncomfortable, realities.

America is awesome, she even does know where people who are not officially there are (I am not sure we in Brazil can even say where our legal immigrants came from, pero que los hay, hay). If you only knew where they are now, you could deport them. And if they knew where they are, they could self-deport.

Now, to me this is a real mystery: does Tyler really believe this stuff? He is a very, very smart person after all…

Just one detail from the original article: “the deportations have reached an all-time high in 2013″. No mention at all about Obama’s administration redefining ‘deportation’ to include ‘turned away at the border” – how many people don’t know about this by now? This is supposed to be serious research (unbiased!)? No information on how the exact number of illegal aliens was obtained, as the first commenter on the site noticed… Tyler, you really take this stuff seriously?

Yes, given how Pew is collecting data, I don’t see how they get so many illegal indians — 450K. Given the entire population is about 2M, that would mean something like 1/3 to 1/2 of the foreign born Indian population is illegal.

I suspect they are double counting h1b (nonimmigrant visa) with illegals or “unauthorized”.

I guess we can argue about the numbers (it does seem high), but here in my Indian heavy community, I know of several, they are typically relatives of a legal migrant that started a business and came to work for him and overstayed their visas.

“The border” doesn’t mean what you think it does. For INS purposes the border is any region of the US within 200 miles of a land or sea border of the nation. Entire states are contained within this zone, as are several major cities.

Remember when the PATRIOT Act passed and we invaded the world because we invited the world? I’m still trying to figure out what was the awful problem we had which the importation of increasing and increasingly exotic peoples was necessary to solve. Aren’t we just importing more scale, complexity, social conflict and atomization in exchange for cheaper drywall hangers and convenience store operators?

What’s next, digeridoos in band camp? And who is going to pay for them? You and me, that’s who! The rising price of beeswax alone could drive the English and French horns right out of the subsidized public school music repertoire. And we don’t need any more bongos. I was willing to go along with some of that, but we are at saturation levels right now. America runs on 4/4 time (3/4 maybe, maybe).

I don’t remember that, I was not alive then. Was there the same % of foreign-born, did they assimilate at the same rate, were they culturally more different or more similar? Or in your mind is every wave of immigration guaranteed to turn out the same as the one in the 1800s because all people everywhere throughout time are fungible?

I don’t think any sane human would dispute that the waves of German immigration significantly changed America, and American culture, in the 19th century. I guess you could argue whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it unquestionably happened.

What happened was the immigrants assimilated and yes the hybrid perhaps changed somewhat but the bedrock of what the nation was/is didn’t change fundamentally.

I do understand that many nativists think it’s different now, that immigrants don’t assimilate like they used to, but I just don’t see it. Kids of Hispanic, Asian, and all other immigrants still speak slangy English like natives, and dress like them, and aspire to do the same things natives’ kids do.

Nope. With the exception of schooling they are barred from all the other benefits you name. It’s possible that some sneak on the benefit rolls via identity theft (they have to have a valid SSN in all cases) but that’s pretty dicey. Mostly they just go back home if things come a-cropper for them here.

“Nope. With the exception of schooling they are barred from all the other benefits you name. ”

Why are you spreading obviously wrong information?

Food stamps, WIC: “The immigration status of the child or the child’s parents does not affect eligibility for these important programs.”

“The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) can be a key source of support for serving nutritious meals and snacks in child care centers, family child care homes, and Head Start programs caring for children from immigrant families.”

“Even if you or your family members can’t get food stamps, you can still get school lunch and breakfast, WIC, and go to soup kitchens, community food banks, meals on wheels and other food programs.”

“•A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households with children is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants (no U.S.-born children) still had a welfare use rate of 56 percent in 2009. ”

“we can also examine immigrant households with children in which all persons in the household are foreign-born. The top of Table 2 reports the use rates for households comprised entirely of immigrants. The table shows that these immigrant-only households have use rates similar to all immigrant-headed households — 56 percent. Use of cash assistance is a little lower for immigrant-only households, while use of public housing is a little higher. The difference in use of food assistance programs is somewhat higher for immigrant-only households than for all immigrant-headed households”

The answer to this question seems pretty straightforward. Aliens who are not authorized to work in the United States are not eligible for unemployment insurance benefits, or UI, in any state. Unfortunately, over the years, illegal aliens have been paid millions of dollars in UI benefits nationwide. The reason for this is quite simple. Many of these illegal aliens were not identified by state Employment Security Agencies as illegal aliens who were not eligible for such benefits. ”
benefits.html”http://thelegalintelligencer.typepad.com/tli/2009/09/are-illegal-aliens-eligible-for-unemployment-benefits.html

Re: Food stamps, WIC: “The immigration status of the child or the child’s parents does not affect eligibility for these important programs.”

You are not contradicting a word I said. My statement is that anyone not in this country legally cannot receive those benefits for themselves. They can’t, period. Yes, their children may receive them of they are citizens– but you are changing the terms when you bring that up. Oh, and children by the way aren’t employed– they can’t get unemployment benefits. Also, non-legal parents can still be deported. Those “anchors” don’t really grab very deep.

I am in favor of the government not legislating abortion. Nevertheless, it clearly is not the woman’s body, not sure how anyone could possibly think that. Pregnancy is in large part a war between the woman’s body and the fetus over available resources. Furthermore the gender issue is a canard.

I assume you would be in favour of men not legislating what women can do with their body after conception?

Why would I be in favor of not legislating to prohibit engaging perverted obstetricians to dismember children in the womb or soak them in caustic brine? That a women makes use of a part of her body to sign the check to this perverted obstetrician is incidental.

That as the founding Anglo-European stock becomes a minority, America more closely resembles the places the immigrants came from. People are not fungible goods.

If you’re African-American, you should be especially worried. Negro phenotypes are practically non-existent in Central and South America; they are located in Caribbean enclaves like the Dominican Republic and Guyana, or the Brazilian underclass. Immigration will probably push all but the upper tier African-Americans back to the 1880’s.

By then it will be too late, Dr. Pangloss. Ask the Syrians what happened when everybody suddenly realized there were way more Sunnis than they thought, and the Sunnis started inviting their Chechen, Libyan, Somalian and Saudi friends in.

Really, no one knew Christians, Druzes, Alawites and other Shias were minority groups. I mean, Caspar Milquetoast accepted to be called Casper by his friends because his parents, said he, were notorious bad spellers. Maybe Sunnis are notorious innumerate.

Maybe you would have been more comfortable with a “body language” expert? I don’t know. It’s tough to know what to do in this era of marginally fewer Mexican immigrants. Maybe look at the Temperance movement. They have many fine brochures with lots of answers.

Negro phenotypes are practically non-existent in Central and South America;

I see you’ve never met anyone from Brazil or Panama. Blacks and mulattoes account for about 7% of the population in Costa Rica, 9% in Nicaragua, 15% in Panama, and 50% in Brazil. That’s not counting the coastal Caribbean states, where blacks and mulattoes are between 25% and 40% of the population.

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Perspective, people. Even if you don’t like dirty brown people coming here to rape your women, this post is about how that trend is REVERSING. Shouldn’t y’all be shooting your guns in the air and giving rebel yells?

Regarding Linus’ point, I would assume that any immigrant to America wants to become an American. That’s my baseline as far as immigration. But it doesn’t make them an American and it would be completely stupid for the headline to say “Americans born in Mexico and still having Mexican citizenship and not actually being U.S. citizens who illegally immigrated to America…”

Regarding your (completely separate) point, I think the position of many commenters is that the change is not sufficient. Personally I do think immigration laws should be enforced and we should move to a high-immigration points-based system like Canada or Australia.

Cliff: I actually agree with you regarding a better immigration system, although you should note that even if we did have a Canadian-style system, illegal immigration would still happen, because people want to improve their lot and because American people want to hire people to do work for them as cheaply as possible. That’s capitalism.

After thinking on the issue, Was your point that many American’s think it’s acceptable to be publicly bigoted, as long as, it’s a non-PC group? If so, I agree. Clearly, msgkings feels that there’s no public shame in being openly bigoted towards a classic out-group.

@JWatts: I’m obviously winding you up, I grew up in redneck country. I am well aware that not every member of any group is automatically prone to the same faults (and strengths) as the group. But I know myself well enough to know my strengths and weaknesses, and on the dimensions important to me I compare pretty favorably to the median redneck. As well as the median African-American if that helps.

I’m not actually bigoted towards anyone, but will sometimes type incendiary things here for my own amusement. Same as the rest of you.

@JWatts: I dunno, I’m not on the Left or Right. There are definitely people way too quick to label others racists, but then there are also actual racists. Online it can be hard to tell who’s who. Best not to take it that seriously in a forum like this.

Cliff, you are really off your game. I was responding to your response to John….he was calling out the racists here who see the news that Mexican immigration is waning due to economic developments and just go back to ‘Mexicans suck’ instead of realizing that the ‘problem’ is abating.

Ben: I wasn’t calling you racist. Your comment is probably correct. Factor price equalization by the way is gonna happen regardless of libertarians, Obama, Trump, Ross Perot, or anyone else.

With respect to cultural amalgamation, I think “melting pot” is great.

I’m not so sure about the ethnic enclaves that develop when you permit mass migration of one ethnic group and make life hard other ethnicities. mysteriously, again, that we permit that pool of labor which is degrading unskilled domestic. Those Asians, Indians, and Eastern Europeans are more likely to compete on educational attainment and entrepreneurship…better double check those visas.

The “rational basis” on policy side comes down to widespread degradation of unskilled labor in the U.S.

I do not blame migrants for behaving rationally. I do blame politicians, economists who bullshit on their behalf, and the companies who own both the economists and the politicians.

The same can be said of trade. Gains from trade for a large and diverse economy are not large: minor enhancement of consumption with perhaps some small effect on GDP. Strong effect on equity, again to the degradation of U.S. unskilled labor. And trade is the holy grail in economics.

The only reason we don’t all live like people in 1800, growing our own food, making our own tools and clothes, working all day long with no surplus of time or resources….is because of specialization and trade. Specialization and trade is quite simply the ONLY reason we have rising living standards. Read the book.

Technological adaptations: how do you think tech happens? It’s not each family inventing their own cell phones. Still specialization and trade.

International trade: so other than raw materials, each country should be an autarky? Doesn’t sound like first world living standards would result. Amazonian tribes don’t trade with the wide world, how’s that working out for them?

@HL: good question, my guess would be not really, no. Trade by definition is a voluntary exchange, can you have too much of those? Specialization is more tricky….in a nuclear/tsunami/zombie apocalypse each person would benefit from knowing how to do stuff like grow food, fix things, shoot a gun, make clothes and shelter, etc. In the modern world there can be problems if you overspecialize in something that goes away (whale oil refiner, buggy whip maker, etc), but in the aggregate is overspecialization a thing? I lean towards not.

What percent of big c has come from classical Greece from Thales to Aristotle, states today within borders of the EU from from Bacon, and the U.S. from Jefferson? 90%? Is most of our trade with natuons interested in the elevation of the human condition, or with states impoverished primarily by culturally permissive attitudes towards corruption?

Trade isn’t ‘interested’ in anything. It’s humans specializing in things and then trading with specialists in other things, sometimes within nations, sometimes between them, Trade happens because people want to. People that trade live better than people who don’t (isolated Amazonian tribes, or the Amish (and the Amish are right here in the good ol’ USA!))